


this is the story of the boys who loved you

by frith_in_thorns



Category: White Collar
Genre: Canon LGBTQ Character, Consent Issues, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 16:52:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/839161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frith_in_thorns/pseuds/frith_in_thorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Feelings don't belong in the report.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is the story of the boys who loved you

_"I won't make you do anything you aren't comfortable with."_

She remembers how those words sounded. _Sound._ They don't lie quiet, even though she turns on music as soon as she can shut the world away behind her apartment door. (No love songs. Not tonight.)

A promise, those words; a reassurance. But also a blunt statement. He _knows_ that he's not doing anything she's not comfortable with so he doesn't have to ask, doesn't have to look for where the lie is.

The _it's too late to back out now_. The _I want to be comfortable with this_, which is superficially similar but in no way the same.

The shower is hot, spray stinging her eyes, and she doesn't in the end scrub at her skin but puts her arms around herself and for a moment hugs herself tightly.

But it's never as satisfying as it looks in movies, with the montage music washing all your thoughts away. It's just a shower and she barely takes any longer than usual. She towels her hair, wipes at the steam on the mirror. Tomorrow she'll have to go into work and write it all up, and just thinking about that makes her feel sick and shaky but she can't not think.

His hands on her had been possessive from the very first touch. Unconsciously so; he's a man to whom it's never occurred that beautiful women might _not_ be comfortable around him. And she had smiled back at him, of course, because that was what she was there for and anyway it wasn't like she'd been expecting to _enjoy_ it.

One could enjoy going undercover as a wealthy buyer, or a high-flying smooth talker, or a fixer-upper, or someone with more money than sense and an apparent willingness to be exploited. But white collar crime happens in boys' clubs, and of course the FBI doesn't want to disrupt the atmosphere; as if the criminals it throws up are anomalies rather than symptoms.

The music is still playing, loud and rhythmic, but it doesn't touch her mood.

In the morning she'll have to write it up and her report will not in any way say, _I kind of feel like I've been raped, but I didn't say I wasn't okay with it and anyway there wasn't even any sex._

Those hands on her. Possessive and firm and not noticing that she wasn't into it even as she'd kissed him back and wondered if this would really be any easier if she wasn't gay. Hands finding her bra strap beneath her blouse with the deftness of practice and not realising that they weren't wanted, that they weren't _supposed to_ …

He was strong, but she could still have taken him in a fight — except that she didn't fight, pinned against his unwanted heat by the weight of so many different expectations. And all the men who were in any form there in the room with her (god, she'll have to listen to the wire recording, won't she?) knew that she could of course have withdrawn her consent at any time.

Of course.

This is why she'll lie by omission in the report, leave out any mention of how it felt to allow that to happen to herself.

She makes hot chocolate and curls into bed in comfortable pyjamas with a book she knows the ending to already. It's gone 2 a.m.; she can see it on the luminous display of the alarm clock reminding her reproachfully that she has to get up in only a few hours. 

If he had looked at her face after he'd started kissing down her neck, across her skin, what would he have seen? Would he have noticed anything at all?

But he didn't look, and that had given her the time to look around his room and notice the open file of records he wasn't supposed to have, the thing that would get them their warrant.

It had been simple from there. A code word; an incoming phone call; an excuse to leave regretfully. And if she'd been Caffrey, maybe she'd have smirked outside about those kisses, those hands.

 _Are you alright?_ Peter had asked her, and she'd been immediately alarmed at the thought of something showing in her face after all.

She's no martyr. It's a cowardice, this omission. How can she explain that it doesn't feel like she had a choice, when it so patently appears that she had a whole basket of them? A choice of role. A choice of mark. A choice of consent. But the jaws of the trap are always set on the intersection of her job with the non-choices of her femaleness and her queerness.

From there, they topple down like dominoes.

She leaves the light on and, somewhat to her surprise, manages to drift in and out of sleep and uneasy dreams.

_"I won't make you do anything you aren't comfortable with."_

She keeps giving the same answer, over and over. It wasn't a question anyway; not really.

_"I know, Boss. It's okay."_


End file.
